Category Archive: Video Marketing

Video marketing, the art of creating and syndicating videos in order to generate more brand visibility and traffic, is becoming less of a novelty and more of a necessity in the modern era. In 2014, video marketing began to swell in prominence and significance, and by 2015, businesses will practically require some kind of video marketing strategy in order to stay afloat.

Fortunately, video marketing is relatively easy to comprehend. It takes a lot of time and effort to research, strategize, plan, execute, and measure the results of your campaigns, but if done correctly, the strategy rewards your business many times over.

There are many facets of video marketing, some or all of which will apply to your specific business. Each has advantages and disadvantages, but almost all of them can be used by some businesses as an exemplary way of showcasing their brand and building customer loyalty.

Video Testimonials and Reviews

The first type of video is one of the easiest to acquire, since it depends on your customers to do the heavy lifting. Video reviews are exactly what they sound like; a user showcases one of your products in a video format, and reviews your product based on what they personally like and dislike. As long as your products are solid, the majority of these videos will be positive, so you don’t need to worry much if a handful of people have something negative to say about your brand or your product.

Encourage video reviews and testimonials by reminding your users to post one after each purchase, or by sponsoring a competition that rewards a random participant with free products or discounts on future orders. However you choose to do it, if you foster this community carefully, you’ll end up with several dozen video reviews and testimonials from your users uploaded directly to sites like YouTube. You’ll earn a backlink back to your site, which will help your SEO efforts, and the people watching these videos will trust the unbiased, personal sources, giving your brand and your products more credibility.

Video Demonstrations and Tutorials

Demonstrations are valuable because they showcase your products in a real environment. These are usually produced in-house, featuring a product specialist or, if your strategy warrants it, a real user of your product. The demonstration can be as in-depth or as general as you see fit; short videos less than 30 seconds or so are watched in full more often, but videos longer than five minutes tend to attract the most serious users to watch them. If you’re more interested in highlighting the product, shorter is better. If you’re more interested in informing the user, longer is the best route.

Tutorials also come in handy, especially when paired with a corresponding how-to article. Tutorials walk the user through a series of step-by-step instructions that guide them through a specific task. Almost any how-to article can be converted into a video format, which will maximize your potential audience and give you more visibility on video sites like YouTube.

Informational and Introductory Videos

Informational videos are similar to video demonstrations and tutorials in the sense that they’re designed to inform or educate a user. However, they’re generally focused on a different range of topics. For example, a demonstration might focus on how a product is used, a tutorial might illustrate a step-by-step guide, and an informational video might introduce a user to a broad topic or identify and explain a new trend in the industry.

Introductory videos could also double as subtle advertising for a new line of products or a new service your company is featuring. They are designed to capture the interest of the user and inform them about what’s coming up. The biggest drawback with introductory videos is that they tend to be short-lived; tutorials and informational videos generally cover “evergreen” subjects, which aren’t specific to any season or time period.

Entertaining Videos

Entertaining videos are a must if you’re interested in maximizing social shares and visibility. Videos that are humorous, amusing, shocking, or otherwise engaging tend to be viewed multiple times and shared, and eventually they reach a wider audience as a result. While going the entertainment route exclusively may not align with your current brand standards, you can always inject an “entertaining” factor into any of your other videos in order to increase shareability.

Entertaining videos aren’t just limited to funny or shocking videos, however. You can also post casual interviews with industry professionals or leadership within your own organization, or videos of special events you’ve hosted or attended.

Starting a Video Marketing Campaign From Scratch

If you’ve never started a video marketing campaign before, you might feel intimidated, especially since the medium has evolved radically over the past several years, but getting set up is relatively simple.

Step One: Claim Your Accounts

First, you’ll want to find an easy way to upload, post, and share your videos. Otherwise, your audience won’t be able to see them! Claim a YouTube account for your company if you haven’t already, and set up at least one channel—more if you plan on having separate subjects of videos to upload. Then, make sure your site and social media profiles are ready to hold videos you choose to embed or share.

Step Two: Outline Your Goals

Before you start shooting footage or sketching outlines for future videos, you need to identify your key goals. Are you trying to build your brand’s reputation? Are you trying to earn more backlinks for your SEO campaign? Are you trying to make your brand visible to a greater number of people? The answers to these questions will help you determine what types of videos you need to produce.

Step Three: Set Your Schedule

After you’ve set your goals firmly, you can outline a general course for your video production schedule. For example, you could aim to produce one new tutorial video per week while encouraging video reviews and testimonials in the background. Keep your production schedule in line with your goals, and leave room for adjustments either way.

Step Four: Produce

Choosing your team is one of the most important stages of the process. While many amateur videographers are perfectly capable of handling short videos, you’ll want to ensure your brand is presented consistently in the medium. Hiring a professional videographer may be a better option if you have the budget and the production capacity for it. Otherwise, you could split the planning work between your existing team and hire a freelancer to fill in the rest.

Keep tabs on how many views and shares your videos are getting. Pay close attention to your most popular and least popular subjects, and start adjusting your production schedule accordingly. The key to being successful in a video marketing campaign is to give your audience what they want—so read comments and engage with your viewers directly to discover their needs and adapt your strategy to accommodate them. You should also measure how much your traffic increases at regular intervals once your video marketing strategy begins to determine its overall ROI.

It will take a few months before you get into the groove of your video marketing campaign. Don’t worry; the more you learn about your specific audience and what kind of reception your videos are getting, the easier it will be to adjust your campaign and really start seeing results.

Multimedia forms of content, including images and video, are becoming increasingly important for SEO and content marketing in general. Plain written content is fine for the bulk of your content strategy, but you need to include other mediums if you want to appeal to the widest audience and avoid the possibility of your content becoming stale.

For many entrepreneurs, video marketing is an unexplored front. Small business owners especially, with limited resources and limited budgets, experience difficulty in producing video content that meets all of their goals. Even if the resources are in place to make a great video, they often have no idea how to properly optimize their video content for SEO—after all, Google robots tend to scan the web for text-based content before anything else.

Hosting

If you’re going to make a video, you want to make sure it’s visible to as many people as possible. You also want to make sure your video is available on your core website; as a result, many people consider hosting their own videos. However, hosting your own videos can be somewhat time intensive (and cost intensive if your website does not currently support video hosting functionality). Plus, if something goes wrong with your servers—which is more likely than with an offsite hosting solution—your video could get lost temporarily.

For most business owners, especially small business owners and those with limited budgets and technical expertise, the best option is to host a video offsite, and simply embed that video on your main site to get the best of both worlds. And of course, the best option for video hosting on the web is still YouTube.

It’s fast, easy, and free to upload your videos on YouTube. Create a specific channel and use that channel for all your video communications. If you plan on managing multiple videos over any period of time, you’ll thank yourself later when you have all your videos hosted in one easy-to-manage location.

Uploading your videos to YouTube has an added bonus of visibility; if YouTube were qualified as a major search engine, it would be the second most popular search engine in the world. That’s a lot of YouTube-specific searches you could be ranking for, in addition to traditional Google searches.

Optimizing for YouTube

Optimizing your video to rank high in YouTube searches is simpler than you might think. There are several factors YouTube uses when considering videos for user queries, some of which are easier to control than others. Among those factors include:

The total number of views of the video—this is hard to achieve right off the bat, but the more views you have, the better.

The length of time each user spends viewing the video—you can improve this by making your video content more interesting.

Ratings and comments—the more positive reviews and comments you have, the higher you’ll rank. You can only improve these by creating great content.

The total number of subscribers your channel carries, which can improve if you produce videos regularly.

The total number of embeds and playlist features your video showcases.

Most of these factors can be boiled down to one idea: make your video something that people want to watch, and it will eventually earn its place at the top of YouTube’s ranks.

Titles and Descriptions

Google bots and YouTube bots work the same way; they cannot actively watch your video, so they have to use peripheral and text-based pieces of information in order to discern what your video is about and whether it’s relevant for a given search. As a result, you’ll have to include a title and description that are optimized for these search engines—just like you would with a piece of written content.

For the title, write something concise that accurately sums up the topic of your video; don’t try to stuff keywords in there, but do ensure the title is appropriate for the material within the video. For example, if you create a video on how to knit a scarf, the phrase “how to knit a scarf” should probably appear somewhere in your title. You’ll also want to make your title as catchy as possible with action words—this will help your video stand out and attract more views.

Descriptions work similarly, but allow you more wiggle room to get creative. Use long phrases and choose your words carefully to optimize for long-tail keywords and mirror some of the queries your users might search for to find this video.

When embedding the video on your site, make sure the title and description are present. You might also consider including a full written transcript of the audio of your video as well. Not only is it helpful to users who aren’t interested in watching the full video, it’s also a great source of original content that can be scanned and interpreted by search bots.

Tags and Schema Markups

Tags are an oft-neglected characteristic of your videos, but they are important and they serve an important function. Tags are another avenue that can communicate the purpose and subject of your video to Google and YouTube bots who want to understand how your video should be categorized in the database. Perform a handful of your own searches for videos similar to your own. Take a look at the top-ranking videos and analyze the types of tags they use—mirror that strategy when tagging your own videos, adding in any other additional tags that might be relevant. Just don’t make the mistake of including tags that aren’t relevant for your material—that can only hurt you in the long run.

Creating a schema markup on your website is another way to ensure Google and other search engines know the video is there. This is a type of HTML markup that offers up information on your video in a set, digestible format to search engine bots. It won’t interfere with anything on your site other than making your video easier to see and index.

Building Links and Social Sharing

Once you’ve completed the work of uploading your video and optimizing it for search engines to find, you can start focusing on how your video actively increases the SEO and traffic to your main site. This video is going to be a road to your website, and positioning it for the greatest number of social shares and external link opportunities is the best way to attract that authority and traffic.

Start by sharing your video on all your social media channels on a rotating basis, changing up your introductory copy each time so it appears fresh. Respond to your commenters and build a community around your video content. Eventually, if your content is amusing, surprising, or informative enough, your users will start sharing your material on your own, and you can foster an environment of social sharing and link building that passes more authority to your domain.

If you don’t already have video content as a part of your content marketing strategy or SEO campaign, it’s time to get involved. As the market becomes saturated with traditional content marketing campaigns and users become more demanding of interactive mediums, video is only going to increase in importance in the years to come.

If there are two things that every Internet marketer hopes to become great at, they are probably: 1) ranking a website on the first page of a Google search, and 2) creating a highly successful viral video.

These two drive the biggest income for most marketers. Getting a first-page rank on Google and running a marketing campaign through a viral video bring tons of traffic and that much-coveted conversion.

But let’s talk about how to do the viral video. This has become every Internet marketer’s Holy Grail. You know how it is with Internet marketing: If people can’t find you on Google’s first page, your business might as well be not exist.

And in this day and age, when marketers are vying for the top spot on the search engines, video has become one of the most indispensable tools that can help a marketer beat the competition.

That’s because if SEO won’t work for your conventional marketing techniques, such as blogging, you can still count on video marketing. If all else fails, video can save the day.

Creating a viral video campaign has some great perks. Video marketing is low-risk because the technologies involved are not particularly expensive, and producing a marketing video doesn’t require huge amounts of time.

Thus, many marketers have “Go Viral!” as their marketing battle cry. It should be yours, too.

So how do you set out to create video content that has the potential to go viral? Let’s look at four guaranteed ways.

1. Hilarious content almost always goes over big

You don’t need to go overboard on this one. Just study some of the most hilarious viral videos that are making the rounds on the social space.

You can either borrow other people’s hilarious content, stage your own, or stay perpetually on the lookout for something hilarious to use as the basis for an amusing and potentially viral video.

To become a successful video marketer, you always need to have a compact camera on hand, all the time. You never know what funny material might be lurking around the corner. Ideas are not that hard to find; they come at us all the time. Most people just don’t bother to capture them when they happen.

2. Create controversial content that evokes curiosity and interest

You can create videos that talk about some of the most trendy topics in politics, entertainment, and the news. Topics that you might choose include those that provoke people’s passions and emotion. Try to devise video content that might clarify people’s thoughts about the subject.

3. Provide good information

People go online not only to find videos about news and entertainment, but in order to learn how to do stuff. They love videos that show them exactly HOW to do something or create new things. When setting out to create an instructional video, be as informative as you can and provide as much value as possible. If you can inject a little humor into it, so much the better.

4. Provide easy ways for people to share your videos across the Internet

Encourage your audience to share your videos across the social space by including buttons for Facebook Like, Google+, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, and Twitter. In fact, at the end of your video, ask viewers to like or share your videos. There’s actually no harm in doing that. In fact, it’s extremely beneficial.

As you can see, it takes a bit of effort to fashion viral video for marketing purposes. But, as with anything having to do with marketing, you should always strive to provide value first. Then add a dash of charm or hilarity, and you are sure to create a video that is on its way to collecting hundreds of thousands of views.

Conclusion

Video marketing is a growing market, and marketers are scrambling to figure out how to create a viral video. For more information on creating successful marketing videos, contact us today.

Trying to figure stuff out can take a toll on your time — a precious commodity that none of us can afford to squander. That’s why I have put together some of my thoughts here on creating marketing videos that your audience will find useful so you’ll waste less of your time trying to figure things out.

When it comes to creating videos, beginners don’t usually concern themselves with the length of their opus, or what the experts call running time.

But according to them, there’s a natural limit to how long how we can pay attention to something.

They say that a person can only pay attention to a video for about 83 seconds . . . which is a little less than one and a half minutes. (I don’t know about that; seems like some guys are glued to their TV set for a full hour to catch each episode of the History Channel’s “Ancient Aliens.”)

So does this mean you should limit your marketing videos to a minute and a half?

I guess the answer to that would have to be a resounding yes . . . and no.

Yes, if you can drive home your marketing video’s message in only a minute and a half.

But if you’ve got lots of interesting things up your sleeve that you want to show your audience, and you believe you could hold their attention for more than 90 seconds, then go right ahead and create a marketing video that runs longer than a minute and a half. By all means.

Now, let me reiterate that point: You don’t have to limit yourself to an 83-second video if you’re able to hold your audience’s attention for longer than that.

And if you have what it takes to pack a two- to three-minute video with awesomeness, that’s great, as long as your audience buys it.

But how do you put together a marketing video that your audience will totally love, even if it lasts more than two minutes?

Segment, segment … and then segment some more

The most interesting and important parts of your marketing videos should be broken down into segments. This makes it easier for an audience to follow your video and it has a chance at effectively holding their interest, and making them hope for more.

Inform and educate

Make your marketing video useful by providing enough information, but sufficiently simple, that your audience can easily digest it all. Provide them with some interesting takeaways. Viewers love good takeaways.

Include appropriate images

Use compelling images to go with your marketing message. It’s a fact that blog posts and videos are much more powerful when accompanied by appropriate images that complement the text.

Use animations

If you’re using Keynote or PowerPoint to create marketing videos, make it more interesting by maximizing the animation features of these two products.

Use appropriate background music

Yes, the right music moves ya’ll and your soul. With the right background music, you can evoke the emotions that you want to associate with your product or service. Just be sure to acknowledge the source of the music.

Use texts and images that are easy on the eyes

Avoid small fonts, tiny and detailed images, and the kind of typefaces that strain the eyes. Always keep your viewers’ comfort and comprehension in mind. Before launching your videos, show them to your friends and request their honest and unadulterated responses.

You don’t want to spend dozens of hours creating these videos, only to have them fall flat because they still need lots of work that should have been done before exposing them to the public.

Remember, marketing videos should be created with your audience in mind. So put yourself in their shoes before designing your videos, and ask yourself the same questions that your audience would be apt to put to you after watching your video.

YouTube is one of the most compelling forces in online marketing today.

If you are running an online business but you’re not taking advantage of YouTube, you could be missing out on a huge opportunity. With YouTube’s incredible reach and innovative technology, it’s easy to boost your marketing and improve your sales with very little effort.

Use video for increased engagement

One of the biggest reasons why you should turn to YouTube for your main video marketing channel is that video is such a versatile tool. And it’s one of the most engaging forms of communication channel.

Nothing beats video as a great tool to demonstrate what your product is all about. In a traditional business, images are used to show customers a catalog of products as well as to demonstrate how to use a select few of them.

With video, on the other hand, you can do so much more. Not only will you be able to demonstrate how your product is generally employed, but you can also show a variety of potential uses in specific situations and for different needs.

By promoting your brand, products, or services on YouTube, you will not only provide your customers with an extremely engaging way to explore what you have to offer; you will also make it easy for them to share your video across their networks through social media.

Because online videos are fairly easy to produce nowadays, your marketing can get more creative by encouraging your customers to become involved. You don’t always have to produce videos yourself; you can run contests in which you get your customers to create videos about why they like your product, or innovative ways they found to use it.

As an incentive, you can award prizes . . . but for some customers, just being able to brag about being a winner and direct their friends and family to their winning video may have plenty of value.

You can give away cash prizes, a free subscription to your service, and many other rewards, but be sure to consult with YouTube up front on the terms you need to follow when running such contests.

How big companies take advantage of video

Large operations have recognized the power of YouTube. In fact, many businesses have seriously considered abandoning traditional video ads in favor of YouTube marketing.

We have observed big brands vying for that precious spot on YouTube’s first page in order to get their target customers’ attention. Below are several memorable examples of how this has worked for name corporations.

Old Spice. This venerable company ran a series of cleverly crafted videos that succeeded in going viral. I must say I was very impressed at how well they managed their social media and YouTube campaign.

Their blitz of Old Spice videos on YouTube did not just garner massive attention from customers around the globe; the ads have also inspired spoofs. Other companies naturally tried to follow suit, but no one has captivated an audience the way Terry Crews and the gang at Old Spice did.

The result? Tens of millions of video views and an explosive bottom line.

Geico. Here’s a testament to the proposition that you don’t have to produce new videos to promote your business on YouTube. All Geico did was to make their existing video ads available on the number one Internet video site.

On their YouTube channel, Geico has included a link that says “Get a Quote,” which links to their main site — a clever way to bring in traffic and new customers for their business.

Here’s a tip: You can take your existing content, such as articles and blog posts, and repurpose all of it into videos. That way, you won’t have to strain your head about having to start from scratch.

Conclusion

Because of YouTube’s massive ready-made audience, there’s no better video channel to promote your business. And the best time to start is right now, when video marketing on the Internet is still in its relative infancy. If you move now, you can get a good head start against your competition.

Ask us today about how your business can get started with video marketing.

Viral marketing is the Holy Grail of online marketers. With viral marketing, a brand has the potential to amass huge amounts of traffic from a highly interested audience.

The result is instant brand awareness within a minimal amount of time. But the thing with viral marketing is that content has to be both highly engaging and easy to share.

What follows are the most basic yet powerful steps toward launching an effective viral marketing campaign for your online business.

Keep your marketing campaign as simple as possible

Your viral marketing strategy is just a way for your marketing message to be delivered. What really matters is the message.

If you use intricate and complex marketing presentations, you run the risk of drowning out your message. That’s why it’s crucial to use simple marketing tactics to highlight the message you want to get across.

Make the value of your message stand out so it’s share-worthy.

Create a list of ideas

It takes time for a great idea to be realized. Don’t rush things. Take the time to brainstorm for great marketing messages that people would find interesting and would be inspired to share to other people.

Make a list of ideas and add to that list every day. Allow those ideas to build naturally over time.

And when an idea seems finally ripe, execute it quickly, without delay. Finish your project as swiftly as you can to keep it fresh, especially if your idea relates to a timely issue.

Make your marketing message relevant

Your marketing message should be relevant. This is important because it’s easier to draw a crowd of interested audience if they can relate to your message.

A parody of a timely issue is often a hit across a wide range of viewers because people can relate to it easily. However, you want to be sure not to drown out the essence of your marketing message with it. It’s fine to use humor, but keep the main message central to your campaign.

Execute!

Nothing will ruin a great idea more thoroughly than poor execution. Make every element of your marketing campaign fresh and visually appealing to your audience.

By creating a content that is worthy of other bloggers’ attention, you will compel them to write about your content — which could lead to additional viral exposure for your content.

And don’t forget: when bloggers and other marketers do write about your content, be sure to acknowledge them. This will help you create lasting relationships with other online marketers who have helped your content to become viral.

Optimize your content for both search and social media

People should be able to replicate your message effortlessly. That’s the reason it’s crucial to optimize your content not only for search, but also for social media.

When you optimize for social media, you have to make it easy for your audience to share your content on Facebook and other social networking sites by including social media share buttons for Facebook Like, Twitter, StumbleUpon, and Pinterest.

When people find your content share-worthy, they won’t hesitate to click on any of the share buttons to show their friends what they have stumbled upon.

Conclusion

If you are an online marketer, your marketing messages should be highly visible and shareable. By adhering to practices that give your marketing messages the best opportunity to go viral, you will enjoy a flood of attention to your message in only a short amount of time.

Allow us to help you build awesome marketing campaigns for your business by utilizing some of the most compelling social media marketing strategies available. This will enable your business to grow virally. Contact us for more information and to learn about the options that are out there for you.

Video blogging — or vlogging, as it is more commonly called — is on the rise. That’s because bloggers and Internet marketers are waking up to the world of difference that video is offering for their online marketing business.

As you may already have heard from the Video Boss himself, Andy Jenkins, video makes more money than anything else these days. Why? Because video engages more attention and demonstrates more content in less time. And video seems to add legitimacy to any business.

Apart from that, video has lots of other advantages. Some of you may not be aware of it, but video is good for SEO. In fact, for many search results nowadays, good ol’ Google includes a couple of videos in the very first page of its search results.

I think we can safely say that Google — and Bing and Yahoo! for that matter — loves videos.

Another essential thing to know is that video is good for a site’s bounce rate. Why? Since highly informative and entertaining videos are extremely engaging, visitors to the site tend to stay longer, and they move from one video to another within the domain, if they’re available.

Clearly, video blogging can do more for your current Internet marketing efforts if you’re not doing it yet.

So how does one set out to create a successful vlogging campaign?

1. Know what you want to achieve through vlogging

Begin with your goal firmly in mind. Before you set out to produce every single one of your videos, the most efficient and time-saving thing you can do is to plan ahead. The things that you want to achieve with your video blogging campaign should be very clear in your head from the start.

What do you want to achieve by using a video blog? Is it to increase traffic? Expand your subscriber list? Boost sales? Reach out to a wider audience? Knowing what you want will inevitably guide your choices for vlogging content.

2. Tell a moving or compelling story

Nothing sells an idea or a product better than an emotionally-charged story. That’s because emotions drive people to take action.

Study how to create powerful scripts or story lines for your video blogging campaigns. Also remember that compelling stories make audiences crave to see more, so effective vlogging will keep ’em coming back.

3. Optimize your video

Optimize your videos for the keywords that your campaign is targeting. For best results, upload your videos on YouTube, because YouTube is the most-visited video site on the Internet.

Of course, nothing should stop you from distributing your videos to other video-sharing sites, such as Vimeo, Videofy, and Veoh.

The areas of your video that you should optimize for keywords you seek to target include the title, the description, and the tags.

4. Post videos to your blog and share while it’s still fresh

Especially if you’re vlogging about a time-sensitive issue, you’ll want to post your video on your blog right away and let your subscribers know about it as soon as possible after that. It’s a great idea to use video along with a subscriber list so that when a new video goes up, you can broadcast it immediately to your list.

You should also broadcast your newly-produced video to social sharing sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and StumbleUpon.

If you are new to video blogging, it may take a while to learn these and outs, but as you progress and get used to the process, it will become a way of life for you. And you’ll soon reap the rewards that video marketing has in store for your marketing campaigns.

Conclusion

One of the best ways to improve your online marketing campaign is to take advantage of video blogging. For help in setting up a video blog for your business, contact us today.

If done properly, viral video marketing can be one of the most profitable endeavors you can pursue as an online marketer, and you should full take advantage of it.

Some of the top Internet marketers have stated over and over again that among the many Internet marketing techniques at their disposal, it has been video that made them the most money.

Hot as it is, video marketing is still just a small portion of the online marketplace. There are reasons why many marketers continue to shy away from online video marketing. One is that most of them are afraid of the technologies involved. They assume that the necessary tools are expensive and the time needed to produce a decent online video is going to be substantial.

Another reason many marketers still don’t make a foray into video marketing is that they fear that having to compose a viable script for video is too difficult. They believe it’s something only the pros can pull off.

Let’s lay these fears to rest.

First of all, creating a decent marketing video is simple. The tools you need to create a meaningful video — most of them — can already be found in your computer.

The time it takes to create a video is also not that significant. In many cases, it takes only about an hour to produce a potentially viral video . . . maybe even less.

Creating the script is also far more simple than most people think. Here are some tips for creating a meaningful marketing video script.

First of all, begin with “What’s in it for my customers?”

Write down all the benefits and advantages of your product that can solve your customers’ pressing problems.

What does your product do? Is it going to “reduce pain” Is it going to “increase pleasure”?

Create a list of all the things that your product can do for your customers.

Create a hook using the major benefit that your product offers

If your product offers a time-saving advantage or a more efficient way of getting work done, use that as your opening hook.

The best way to figure out your product’s major benefit is to ask yourself how you could describe it in three words or less. Make your intro interesting. Don’t just baldly state what your product is all about.

Hook the viewer by intriguing him or asking a question to which you can tie the major benefit.

Show them the way

Now that you’ve perked a little interest with your opening line using your product’s major benefit, proceed in your video to a simple step-by-step presentation of how your product can help people solve their problems or increase their pleasure.

The urgent call to action

The same as in most sales copy, the script for your viral video marketing campaign is going to be no different in terms of getting your audience to act. But don’t just show people how to get your product. Add a sense of urgency — the “NOW” factor. Make them feel they will regret it if they don’t act right away.

There’s really no secret formula for writing a viral video marketing script that truly works. Just use the simple rules for motivating people to act, and keep it simple. For best results, keep your marketing videos short, probably under 3 minutes so as to avoid bombarding your audience with too much information that is not essential.

Conclusion

Video marketing can be an extremely lucrative activity. If you’re not taking advantage of it for your business yet, you could be missing out on a lot of opportunities.

To learn more about how to integrate video into your business, contact us for details.

One of the best but perhaps one of the most under-appreciated marketing tools that every online marketer who does viral video marketing should use is StumbleUpon.com.

StumbleUpon isn’t new, but it is one of the most useful social bookmarking sites out there. While it is ostensibly a bookmarking site, perhaps it can best be described as a discovery or recommendation site. This is due to the fact that content posted on StumbleUpon gets promoted there based people’s particular interests.

As an online marketer doing affiliate marketing, you should be interested to learn that StumbleUpon is used by more than 20 million registered and active users. While 20 million users may seem like a small number compared to the hundreds of millions of active Facebook users and several tens of millions on Twitter, that number is still substantial enough to warrant the interest of any marketer looking for a profitable channel.

You should consider coordinating your video and social media marketing for affiliate campaigns with activities on StumbleUpon. As you will see, doing this can be very good for search engine rankings.

Here is how you can direct targeted traffic to your video marketing campaign through the use of StumbleUpon:

Use. Su.pr as a gateway to StumbleUpon

Su.pr is one of those social media marketing tools that not many marketers are taking advantage of. It’s a tool owned by StumbleUpon that primarily shortens URLs.

What Su.pr does is let you post links to Facebook and Twitter simultaneously with a shortened URL, while at the same time posting the same link on StumbleUpon.

Below is a list of all the things Su.pr can do:

It creates pretty or shortened links

It broadcasts links to several Twitter and Facebook accounts simultaneously

It lets you schedule posts

It provides you with information about when is the best time to post

It lets you track the number of hits to your link

It shows you the most visited posts

It provides the option to post on StumbleUpon

Bookmark video links on StumbleUpon for high-quality traffic

Let’s say you’ve uploaded a new video on YouTube. Now you want to promote it to an eager audience on StumbleUpon.

Copy your YouTube link and post on Su.pr. By default, it will shorten your YouTube URL and post it on the attached Facebook and Twitter accounts. After posting the link, click on the thumbnail for the newly posted link. A new window will pop up in which you will be prompted to choose a category and enter tags and description.

Select the best category for your video. Enter appropriate tags for your post. For best results, use the keywords you are optimizing for. Enter a keyword-optimized description for your post.

This will automatically share your video to StumbleUpon. Remember that because links posted on StumbleUpon are based on very specific interests, traffic coming from this site is going to be mostly very highly targeted.

It should be no surprise that some online marketers have reported an increase in traffic and engagement because of StumbleUpon and Su.pr.

And since StumbleUpon is a high-authority social bookmarking site, using this in tandem with your video marketing campaigns is an incredibly powerful tactic.

If you are new to viral video marketing, utilizing StumbleUpon can provide a huge advantage for your marketing efforts. This remarkable tool will provide you with that much-needed traffic fast and give your video marketing an opportunity to go even more viral.

One of the newest, most exciting, and most profitable online marketing techniques that every online marketer should explore is video blogging.

Andy Jenkins, the “Video Boss,” says video makes more money than any other Internet marketing tactic. That is absolutely true; many Internet marketers can attest to how profitable video marketing has been for them.

Furthermore, some of the biggest authorities in the publishing media have reported that online advertising is much more powerful if videos are included.

Blogging has come a long way in the past decade, and it has proven its worth as a powerful tool for getting marketing messages across effectively. Now its newest form, vlogging — or blogging with the use of video — has become the favored approach of extremely enterprising marketers.

Why?

That’s because video blogging exposes your business to a lot more opportunities for online traffic and conversion.

So let’s take a look at how vlogging can help your business grow both in traffic and conversion.

Video blogging effectively positions you as an expert and authority

With video blogging, you can demonstrate how your business or idea works in a much more compelling way for casual online visitors. Nothing persuades a potential customer better than seeing visual evidence and demonstrations.

Vlogging makes your business more legitimate in the eyes of target consumers, and it positions you as an authority within your industry. In short, video blogging can put you way ahead of your competition.

Better yet, since not that many marketers are taking advantage of vlogging these days, if you go into it now, you’ll have a tremendous opportunity to grab a position in the market that’s far beyond your competition.

Video blogging makes your website more engaging

Currently, we live in a visual world where people are more engaged and attentive when they encounter graphics and moving images. And as consumers, we tend to believe more in whatever our eyes see than what they read.

With vlogging, you engage your customers more and provide them with a stronger overview of how your solutions and ideas can serve them. In a video, you can clearly demonstrate why your product or business is the right choice for them.

Video makes more money than anything. Period.

Quite simply, video attracts more traffic, converts more visitors into paying customers, and brings in more revenue than any other Internet marketing technique.

In fact, some highly successful marketers were able to sell more than in the past without any subscriber list. All they had to do was devise and shoot a series of simple videos for their campaigns, and they were able to rake in millions of dollars from new customers.

You don’t have to come up with fancy videos for any of your marketing campaigns. For most customers, what really counts is the message of the campaign. To score big, video blogging must simply address the most compelling question on every potential buyer’s mind: What’s in it for me?

So if you haven’t yet gotten involved in video blogging, it’s time to rethink your strategy and plan to move in that direction. Vlogging isn’t a fad. It’s the wave of the future. Video is here to stay and it will undoubtedly become a staple of most companies’ marketing campaigns.

If the idea intimidates you, keep in mind that video blogging is so simple that once you’ve started doing it, you’ll want to kick yourself for not having pursued it sooner.

Conclusion

Video is certain to grow in popularity and importance. It already has a reputation as a force to reckon with in the world of online marketing. That’s why you need to take advantage of it right away and get a jump on the competition, while video marketing is still a relatively small part of the action.

If you want to find out more about how to set up a successful online video campaign for your business, drop us a line and ask about your options.